


forget about the afterglow

by BernRul



Category: Mr. Robot (TV)
Genre: Canon Compliant, Explicit Language, Introspection, M/M, Major Spoilers, Missing Scene, Non-Explicit Sex, Season/Series 04, probably
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-20
Updated: 2019-10-20
Packaged: 2020-12-24 12:17:49
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,424
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21099344
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BernRul/pseuds/BernRul
Summary: Elliot will do anything to forget the death of a loved one. Tyrell's willing to oblige.





	forget about the afterglow

**Author's Note:**

> Warning: Huge, huge spoilers for Season 4. If you aren' t caught up, don't read.

Allsafe is a ruin. A squatter's paradise, or should be, but even New York's many homeless seem repelled from this place, as if it's haunted. Perhaps it is. It looks like it's been abandoned for years, a relic from the '08 recession or even earlier, but Tyrell knows it was an active business a mere six months ago.

As Tyrell walks through the building, going incognito mode with his baseball cap and sweats, he's flooded with memories. There's Elliot Alderson at his computer, startled by the interuption. Elliot at the conference table, framing Terry Colby, an act that goes unnoticed by everyone except Tyrell. 

How different they both were. 

Monotiny. Hopelessness. Boredom. That's what colors Tyrell's days since becoming CTO. Or rather, since becoming the Dark Army's puppet.

Sometimes he pretends Joanna's still with him. His son, too. He comes home to their expensive new penthouse (suck on that, Scott) to find her leaning over the baby's cradle, singing a Danish lullaby. Sometimes he imagines he's back in the arcade, the neon signs lighting up Elliot's eyes, that night that Elliot was his prophet and he a fervent believer. He dreams they never finished the hack; that it's still just him and Elliot, shoulder to shoulder, staring at the monitors on the cusp of victory. 

Now, after weeks of waiting in mind-destroying helplessness, they're finally meeting. Tyrell isn't sure how to feel about it.

It's not like they have a good record with abandoned buildings.

Elliot's back is turned to him. He stares at a bulletin board, reading the index cards taped to it. He turns at the sound of footsteps.

_Bonsoir Elliot,_ bubbles up in his brain. He doesn't voice it.

"Elliot," he says instead.

"Tyrell."

Elliot looks like shit. There's no kinder way to say it. The color's sapped out of his skin. The bags under his eyes tell a story of insomnia or drugs or both. 

"What's going on?" Tyrell asks. "Have you found something?"

"I have a lead on White Rose's bank," Elliot says. He sounds bored, almost indifferent. Like they're discussing the Yankees or something equally banal instead of the greatest coup in human history.

"That's great news," Tyrell says. "When can we get it?"

"Soon."

Tyrell waits for him to continue, but he doesn't. He wants to pull his hair out. This is exactly how he felt after Elliot tried to sabotage Stage 2.

"Which Elliot am I speaking with?" he asks coldly. In rare moments of clarity, Tyrell admits that he's not in the position to judge another's sanity (hello, Sharon Knowles). Still, he couldn't understand Elliot Alderson's brand of crazy, and it irks him to no end.

For the first time, he sees a spark in Elliot's eyes. His question amused him.

"We're working together now," Elliot says, "so it doesn't make a difference. Our goals are the same."

"That's, that's good," Tyrell says. He lets out a painfully awkward laugh. "It'll be weird not having our progress erased halfway through."

Elliot cocks his head towards him. Damn those huge eyes of his, that handsome, unreadable face.

"There's a deadline," he says. "Christmas."

"Why?"

"That's when the Congo shipment goes through. She won't need me after that. So if this doesn't work, I'm dead."

Elliot's words hit Tyrell like a bullet. Fragmented thoughts rush through his mind: Elliot bleeding on a filthy floor; Tyrell on his knees, heart hammering, as a gun's pointed at his head; Elliot squeezing his neck as he calls him a "Swedish scumfuck." 

(Tyrell ignores the thrilled little tingle that accompanies those memories).

"How do you know?" Tyrell demands. "You're the best hacker alive--White Rose would be a fool not to use you."

"I know," Elliot says emotionlessly.

"Dammit, Elliot, why aren't we moving faster? There's so much to be done. Christmas, for fuck's sake! How can you just--_why_ aren't you taking this seriously?!"

Tyrell wants to throttle him. His fingers itch for the latex gloves he doesn't have. Elliot Alderson was the most infuriating person he's ever met. So why does he care so much when Elliot so obviously doesn't?

Elliot finally speaks up. "Angela's dead."

Tyrell stops cold. Elliot turns back to the board.

"Angela's dead?" Tyrell repeats. He thinks of the petite blonde belittled by Colby, who turned into his co-conspiritor in Stage 2. Tyrell can't pretend that Angela's death truly impacts him (none will, after Joanna), but he knows what she means to Elliot. It drove him mad with jealousy, once, that Elliot turned to her for emotional comfort, that she shared a history with him that he never would. 

"Yeah," Elliot mutters, back still turned. "White Rose's pictures made that really fucking clear."

Tyrell is suddenly grateful that there were no pictures of Joanna dead on the street. No, he thinks bitterly, the Dark Army has an innoncent, living child to keep Tyrell Wellick in line.

"Oh," he says. "I'm sorry."

Elliot doesn't acknowledge him. Tyrell wonders if he should say anything else. Elliot doesn't want comfort; in fact, his whole body actively repels it. Elliot would not listen even if Tyrell were the type to talk feelings, which he most assuredly isn't. The last time Elliot mentioned his wife, Tyrell beat him. Though right now he'd welcome getting clocked by Elliot. At least something would happen. 

Elliot strides over to Tyrell, looking him square in the face. Lately, Tyrell's become fluent in reading Elliot's tells--eye contact versus looking away, cockiness versus silence, melancholy versus righteous rage--but it's muddled now that Elliot's sides are "working together."

"Do you remember what you said to me at the arcade?" Elliot asks.

Tyrell's throat goes dry. "I said a lot of things at the arcade."

"You know what I mean," Elliot says, not backing down. Yes, Tyrell knows exactly what he means. But why is Elliot bringing it up now?

"What do you want?" Tyrell asks, maintaining eye contact. That's what he learned from climbing the corporate ladder: never flinch away or back down. Be the most intimidating person in the room. And he should be--he's taller, wealthier, and more powerful in society--but somehow the shorter man, in his Walmart hoodie and accidentally ripped jeans, can dominate without even trying.

It's his eyes, Tyrell decides. Those eyes are hypnotic. 

"I want to forget," Elliot says, stepping closer. They're close enough now that he can feel Elliot's breath on his face. "I don't want to think about any of this shit."

Tyrell once had a gun fired at him while standing in a defunct Coney Island nightmare, yet he can't remember ever being more terrified than he is now.

He also knows, without being told, that he has to make the first move. Elliot won't, no matter how much he wants it.

Tyrell cups the back of Elliot's head and neck, pulling him forward until their lips crash together. 

It's not the tender, romantic fantasy of their first kiss that Tyrell's been dreaming of for months. That was meant to happen the night of the hack. He was going to kiss Elliot after confessing his love, the kind of romantic kiss he normally only reserved for Joanna, but Elliot rejected him.

Subtext his ass.

Now it's rough and fast with no time for sentimentality. Elliot's hands grip his hair, hard enough to hurt, but Tyrell doesn't mind. He doesn't mind giving up being the dominant force to the man he still loves despite himself. Perhapes he even perfers it. After all, he needs to forget too.

Elliot doesn't moan or sigh, just breathes heavily. Tyrell can't help but groan when Elliot's calloused thumb brushes roughly across his chin, or when Elliot bites down on his lower lip. Something about Elliot brings out his pathetic side, but Tyrell doesn't seem to care. 

He doesn't think as he drops down to his knees. Doesn't think as he tugs on Elliot's belt, wrenching it free and unzipping his fly. He looks up at Elliot's impassive, handsome face. Elliot closes his eyes when Tyrell puts his mouth on him. He wonders what Elliot's thinking. The only sign that he's engaged are the fingers running through Tyrell's hair, almost affectionately.

Tyrell's not so deluded as to think that this will have a happy ending. That afterwards Elliot will profess his undying love as the two of them emerge as godlike figures, vanquishing White Rose. But he doesn't need that, at least not now. He's content to lose himself in this shared forgetting wiht Elliot.

He'll deal with the afterglow later. 

**Author's Note:**

> Season 4's brought back my Tyrelliot feels. I suck at smut, so this is about as explicit as it's going to get. Let me know what you think.


End file.
